The Happy Campers – About Us

 

Matt & Bobbi Hapgood in front of their 2015 Airstream Land Yacht

We are the Happy Campers… it’s a play off our name and inspiration for our travels. Matt and I started our travels in November 2018 to get outside more and get better acquainted with our beautiful and expansive continent. Since Matt doesn’t like hotels, we decided to drag our home-away-from-home behind us. Meet our second home: Aristotle, a 28 foot 2015 Airstream Land Yacht, pulled by our tow vehicle, Plato, a 2016 Porsche Cayenne Diesel. Given that we still have responsibilities at home in Chapel Hill, we tend to travel in spurts spending a few weeks in Aristotle on the road and then a few weeks home.

About Bobbi – Bobbi, that’s me, will do most of the writing and work on the blog, and, in case you were wondering, most of the driving. When not travel blogging, I’m a consultant for nonprofits and foundations, help manage a family ranch in Colorado, and pitch in as needed with the company founded by my husband and his partner. When not sitting at the computer, on the ranch, in a meeting, or at a convention, then you can find me running or hiking wherever I may be. Sometimes those runs end up at a golf course where I may pretend to know how to play. Either way, the exercise comes in handy as I love to throw dinner parties with tons of food and wine.

About Matt – Matt will help with the blog, mainly with edits and the technical information. Matt is a reformed investment banker that co-founded an aviation services company, FlyRight. While he does less of the driving, he is a master at backing up our 28″ trailer. That’s useful when we find an unexpected golf course. He’s addicted to golf, so we travel with clubs at all times. Matt is also addicted to mountain biking and finding epically long trails.

About Aristotle – Aristotle is our beloved 2015 28″ Land Yacht Airstream trailer. He’s equipped with a galley kitchen, small, but adequate bathroom, and a comfy bed that’s close to a double. Aristotle is upfitted with 800 watts of solar panels and 600 AH of lithium battery storage ( Cameron Belscher at Off the Grid Camper.) That’s to say the energy is plentiful with Aristotle. What’s not so plentiful is the water. He has a 38 – 40 gallon fresh water tank. So the limiting factor on our boondocking is not energy, but rather how tolerant we are for being smelly. Want to view other Airstream products?  There are some beautiful models on the Airstream website.

About Plato – Plato is a beast. He’s a 2015 Porsche Cayenne diesel. Plato loves to beat bigger SUVs up mountain roads, and loves the attention he gets even more. More often than not we are asked, can that actually pull your trailer? Well, we have thousands of miles of proof that Plato is amazing leading Aristotle.

This blog is intended to entertain family and friends with our experiences and provide a little knowledge to others either thinking of hitting the road or who may already be on the road. You will find short stories from many of our stops that hopefully have a bit of learning as well as links to products, tools, and resources we have found invaluable. You can also see the trek we’ve made since November 2018. Note that the blog posts whether daily, weekly, or just whenever, will be summarized into trip legs under the Routes Taken.

Like our stories? Feel free to follow us along our journey. Have a question? Just contact us!

Thanks for reading, Bobbi